


The most dark of them all?

by Eye_of_Purgatory



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ethics, Evil Tom Riddle, Flowers, Good vs Evil, Light tom riddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22383451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eye_of_Purgatory/pseuds/Eye_of_Purgatory
Summary: He mocked them, he fought them, but truly he was them.An AU where Tom riddle was a light cored wizard all along.A take on the theme in fics where the magical core determines the character.
Kudos: 3





	The most dark of them all?

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what tags to add! I have no idea, and I'd love if this could get out to more people. I liked it, well I did, and I hope you do too!

Every step were flowers, they followed the child as said child ran. Poppies sprung up in the room, growing from the walls and curling into the windows. Roses dotted the fields when he thought of love, daisies when he thought of friendship, lilies when he thought of parents.

Surprisingly none of those flowers followed him, what did were a plague of vines that sprung from his skin when angry, as if to soothe him and calm him down. He was followed by sunflowers when he was scared that would curl around his body like a protective layer when he wanted to hide.

Everyone noticed the small flowers that seemed to come from him in droves, the ones that would just fall off him as he ran a hand through his hair. The smell of which would cling to him whatever he did, a fragrant smell that had too calm a feel to be perfume.

It was his emotions that ruled him, and Tom could feel that, he could see the thorns that would follow around Billy when he felt annoyed. He could feel it too, when he cried he cried flowers, when he sneezed out would come petals, when he coughed they would be there as well. The others saw it too, they could see the petals that stuck to his hands, and nobody could miss the ones that poked through the ground he stepped on.

They stared at him after a girl had to be rescued from roots constricting her lungs, roots that tried to climb inside. They all knew, and after that it was never the same, Tom wanted nothing more than to tear them away because of how little he could control it.

But even when he felt nothing the grass around his feet would come alive, waving like as if in a fey realm, and the ground would dot with tiny black flowers. He would wade through water and with every step pink petals would rise to the surface.

And it never hit him right how he could make something explode into petals, liquids, solids, metals, foods, animals, and the various little trinkets he could find around.

-

  
  


According to his teachers there was two types of wizard, light and dark. More like a spectrum than anything else, with light corresponding to giving and life, with dark to taking and death. No matter how many times they said the speeches about how your core didn’t mean who you were as a person Tom could hear that none truly believed it.

He couldn’t find a single person who could name a light wizard they thought was evil, but with a passing thought they would list out history’s greatest dare cored tyrants. They would look to the sky and think that what was good was light, and dark was evil. A black and white view on the world.

But not in Slytherin, a Slytherin where there was two types of the snakes. The sadists and the Machiavellians, the ones who used their manipulations to watch the world burn and the ones who used it to achieve their means. Most of the snakes were the Machiavellians, truly kind at heart with witty minds, utterly and totally boring to Tom. But the other houses say all of the snakes as the Sadists, truly twisted souls with a desire to break and tear.

Tom could hear the sadists laugh and jeer at the others, mocking their tamed dark magic, mocking the greys, abusing the lights. He would look at his own hands, and know that at the end of the day they would spin the likes of light magic, they would urge flowers to grow and reach out to help wounded puppies.

According to the teachers only the best of souls were flower bearers, that the lightest of souls were the only ones who bore the burden of such light magic. There were tales about it, flower bearers as saints, angels, some even claimed that they were followed by the forest god who just couldn’t help it. But they all saw it as such: the flower bearers were the lightest cores of them all.

But the dark talk of books, and the opinions of the adults when they thought nobody would care said other things. They would offhandedly mention how psychopathy was a symptom of a dark core, how sadism was a consequence of dark magic. They would publish pamphlets on how a light soul was the best cure to depression, to anger. There were studies on how the light would anger so infrequently it could just be seen as strange outliers. 

The light and dark polarized the more with every secret opinion, with everything that they just weren’t allowed to say but could be felt in the air. The light saw the dark as villains, as the scary monsters that would lurk under the beds of children and the people who would push nations to war. They were the serial killers, rapists, torturers. But the dark saw things the other way around, that the light were wak children, ones who were idiotic and prejiduced, the mob mentality. The dark would look at the light and see them as the ignorant masses, the ones that would cling to the more light like saints with a blind zealotry of insects.

He would look at the flower growing on the windowsill that no matter how much it was removed would always grow back, the poisoned black rose. He would look and know, that the magic that showed he was superior would push him to be seen as a weakling. Seen as a weakling when he knows that most of the Sadists put on acts, when he can’t see a desire to kill in any one of their eyes no matter how much they boast. A desire that he can feel in his sleep, the blind overwhelming rage that peaks the head up when he looses control and whispers of torture.

The inside didn’t match the outside, and his magic would just have to adjust.

  
  


-

  
  


The battle of Hogwarts ended with a bang, just like every single person expected it to, just like how the history books want it to happen. The leader of the bad side is killed and everyone seems to just stop, the event seemingly already fading into a single sentence

_ The dark side lost and the light side won _

The death eaters just settled down, stopped fervently trying to kill children, the children breathed a sigh of relief. Some cried, broke down in tears, shook from the adrenaline, the future nightmares. The castle sung to none.

No matter how much Harry wanted to ignore it, people were telling who was on which side based on their core, and they were right. In a battle of adrenaline and losing oneself they would all devolve to their core, firing whatever felt most right and was easiest. It just so happened that they had divided on core lines.

A heroic tale to be sure, the paragon of light as Harry Potter wielding his light magic, some would testify that they could feel the shine of goodness from farther away than they could even see Harry.

But the other side would say the same about Voldemort, that he looked, sounded, and felt like how dark magic feels to cast. That the feel of it was even more present around Voldemort than the smell of death. His followers believed that everything he touched would die.

The public ate it up, for the whole war they saw it as the fight between God and Lucifer, with sides as polar and deeply different. They thought it poetic, they thought it praiseworthy. Christian wizards would even hold out because they thought the end times were coming.

But what would they think, when they would see the field of flowers surrounding the now dead body, springing up in droves to cling tight to the snake like cadaver. Like the death of a saint, like a rococo painting of god he rested, deep in his field of flowers that just grew and grew.

**Author's Note:**

> It was bitter, Harry thought. It seemed that no matter what you wanted to do fate would always force the opposite. Maybe fate just liked him and this was his ultimate revenge, but he couldn’t help but smile, that the reason for all this positive change was Voldemort.  
>  Maybe this will stick and hopefully, Harry thinks, that this will have Voldemort rolling in his grave. Maybe his existence would have helped more than it hurt.  
>  And isn’t that a bitch.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I'm kinda on a oneshot craze rn but I'd love if you would check out my other works. Obviously only do this if you actually like this, but it'd mean so much to me. I hope you comment!


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